


Silver

by Mottlemoth



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Afterglow, Caring Greg Lestrade, Ficlet, Love, M/M, Mycroft Holmes Has Feelings, Tenderness, closeness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-09
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-16 02:48:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 463
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29943342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mottlemoth/pseuds/Mottlemoth
Summary: What they have started out as sex, but Greg and Mycroft are beginning to change each other.
Relationships: Mycroft Holmes/Greg Lestrade
Comments: 12
Kudos: 175





	Silver

This hotel room has become their favourite. They've been meeting here for months now, twin keepers of a secret which feels both enormous and helplessly small, though the bed itself has never once seemed too big. Greg almost wishes he could carve their names into its frame—mark it somehow, this sacred place where the impossible has happened over and over and over again.

"I think you might have changed me," Mycroft says, brushing his fingers through the back of Greg's hair. Though his voice holds steady, his breath hangs from it by a thread. They both know that he's trembling. His body still shines after their exertions, damp with sweat, his skin still pink in its afterglow. He's raw and he's weak and he's at peace. He's so close to letting go that Greg feel it in the air.

Like all the other moments of fear he's been shown, Greg gathers it in and holds it safe.

"Changed you?" he asks. He curls his fingers at the small of Mycroft's bare back, keeping their bodies together in the dark. "What do you mean, darlin'?"

Mycroft's throat muscles grip and release, priming the words in his mouth.

"Shaped me," he says. He touches his lips to Greg's pulse. "Into something better. Something I was always meant to be. And you've done it so expertly that I can barely now remember what I was."

Greg hums. 

"It's often like that," he says. "When you're close to someone, I mean. It's... well, you affect each other. You blur together in the middle and come away a little different. Sort of like we're paints."

Mycroft seems to like the analogy. His fingers flex a little, the way they often do when he's moved by something. His lips stroke Greg's throat very gently, buying himself time to think. 

"I think I believed myself some shade of black," he says after a while. "Unalterable. Little use in attempting any change."

Greg huffs, smiling. "And then along comes silver."

Mycroft's fingers flex again.

"Brightens me," he says. He pauses, and Greg gets the feeling that whatever he's about to say, it will change things even more. There won't be any coming back from these words. He's ready for them. "Adorns me with stars," Mycroft murmurs, cuddling into Greg's shoulder.

Since Greg's marriage failed—and a failure it was, no matter how hard his therapist tried to persuade him otherwise—life hasn't always been easy. He hasn't always felt too sure about himself. The doubt trickled through into work for a while. It cost him friends, cost him money, cost him time. There were times when he worried he'd have nothing special left to offer anybody, nothing good.

He feels good right now, though.

He feels  _ really  _ good right now.


End file.
